become members.... The Order wishes
to interest itself principally in the vital interests of the human
being on earth; it wishes above all to study in its Temples the
means for realizing Peace between all nations and social Justice
which will enable all human beings to enjoy during their lives the
greatest possible sum of moral felicity and of material
well-being.... Claiming no divine revelation and loudly affirming
that it is only an emanation of human reason, this fraternal
institution is not dogmatic, it is rationalist.[698]

Into this materialist and political club, erected under the guise of
Freemasonry, entered Annie Besant with all the strange conglomeration of
Eastern doctrines now known as Theosophy.

Theosophy

Before entering on this question it is necessary to make my own position
clear. Although I should much prefer not to introduce a personal note
into the discussion, I feel that nothing I say will carry any weight if
it appears to be an expression of opinion by one who has never
considered religious doctrines from anything but the orthodox Christian
point of view. I should explain, then, that I have known Theosophists
from my early youth, that I have travelled in India, Ceylon, Burma, and
Japan and seen much to admire in the great religions of the East. I do
not believe that God has revealed Himself to one portion of mankind
alone and that during only the last 1,900 years of the world's history;
I do not accept the doctrine that all the millions of human beings who
have never heard of Christ are plunged in spiritual darkness; I believe
that behind all religions founded on a law of righteousness there lies a
divine and central truth, that Ikhnaton, Moses and Isaiah, Socrates and
Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Buddha, Zoroaster, and Mohammed were all
teachers who interpreted to men the aspect of the divine as it had been
vouchsafed to them and which in harmony with the supreme revelation
given to man by Jesus Christ.

This conception of an affinity between all great religious faiths was
beautifully expressed by an old Mohammedan to a friend of the present
writer with whom he stood watching a Hindu procession pass through an
Indian village. In answer to the Englishman's enquiry, "What do you
think of this?" the Mohammedan replied:

"Ah, sahib, we cannot tell. We know of three roads up the hill of
endeavour to the gates of Paradise--the way of Mousa